Some leaked pages from an upcoming issue of All New X-Men have revealed a startling and exciting plot twist: turns out the Omega-Level mutant commonly known as Iceman is gay!

The reveal is a bit surprising given the character's long history within the X-men comics. Iceman was one of the original super-humans introduced in 1963 and has been canonically somewhat of a womanizer throughout his character biography. A smaller plot-line in a run of Uncanny X-Men even featured gay mutant Northstar's unrequited crush on the character. Having had numerous relationships with female characters in the past, the decision to potentially retcon his sexuality comes by way of a new story arc which involves complicated time-travelling (as Marvel is wont to do) which lands younger versions of the original X-men team back at the ubiquitous mutant academy.

The pages have since been removed from Tumblr, but the reveal is shown in an interesting and intense exchange between Iceman and his psychic teammate Jean Grey. After a bit of invasive mind-reading, Jean Grey reveals that she noticed his sexuality. Iceman denies the idea at first, but the two eventually have a come-to-jesus moment after kiki-ing about how cute Angel is.

Considering the ever-changing psycho-politics of comic-book time-travel, it isn't hard to come up with numerous explanations as to how the character could either have been an over-compensenating gay all along or how only this particular alternate-timeline version of Iceman is queer. (Interestingly, the pages do specify that this version of Iceman is specifically gay and not bi or just curious.) Ultimately, it hardly matters which explanation you want to go with, but it does show Marvel's increasing interest in diversifying their roster.

h/t: NewNowNext